A Letter to My Children: Need vs Want

Dearest Beloveds,

Courtesy of my obsessive listening to The Emerald Podcast while you two were at camp I have been exposed to this 2013 quote from James Gustav Speth (Gus), co-founder of the National Resources Defense Council, twice in the past few weeks.

I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.

Speth leads me directly into why I can’t sleep the nights after our new car arrives.

I write new car, but as you both know, I am calling it the computer with wheels - because that is what it is.

I do not WANT a computer with wheels. We do not NEED a computer with wheels. We need reliable transportation because there is no public transportation beckoning us at the end our rural driveway.

Instead we are having these conversations in the squeaky new interior.

“I want to ask Google Assistant a question! Why did you turn off the screen?”

“Because it is a distraction from the road and I know where I am going - I don’t need a 12 inch map glaring at me.”

“Can the car play songs for us if I ask Google?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”

“Why did you turn off the screen, I want to see the cameras!”

“I don’t need cameras to tell me how to reverse or park - and once you start driving - neither do you. I am irritated that the screen turned on when I went into reverse - overriding what I asked it to do. I don’t need this car to think for me.”

These conversations are not fun for you, I am sure.

I know they are not fun for me.

So children, here is the question your mother wrestles in the middle of the night.

This insane automobile with its color screens, surround sound, touch lights, automatic blah blah blah is courtesy of rare earth elements, groundwater contamination from mining, diesel emissions from the transportation (both by land and sea), child labor in the cobalt mines, on and on and ON.

Leading me right to Speth’s condemnation of the environmental situation as being a “selfishness, greed and apathy” problem.

Let’s be clear. It is my selfishness, greed and apathy problem.

Selfishness - that my cosseted comfort supercedes the environmental costs of a new car.

Greed - that I am taking more of my fair share of our Mother Earth’s finite resources because I happened to be born into a strata of wealth and privilege.

Apathy - that if I REALLY cared about saving the planet, I would find a used diesel car that I could retrofit to run on vegetable oil. They are known as “veggie cars” or “grease cars”.

Or figure out how to hitch a horse to a buggy and take that to the store. But first I would need a horse.

And horses scare me.

Sigh.

So that is quite fun to write - I just very clearly illustrated my selfishness, greed, and apathy.

How do I get out of that spiral?

I reread the letter I wrote to you both in July of 2023 when I talked about compassion for oneself and others when faced with the underlying hypocrisy of our late stage capitalist existence concerning the environment.

And I reread the letter I wrote to you this September about the importance of not judging myself. To judge myself is to break my own heart - thank you Swami Kripalu.

Maybe that is why I can’t sleep. I am holding the reality of car greed and self compassion.

Both

And

Thank you for allowing your Momma to show my thinking on such things. As always it comes back to love.

I love you both.

Even as I yelp, I know The Good loves us.